Deeper Into the World
by twentyfiveraven
Summary: Everything goes very wrong, very fast.
1. the crow black dream

**Title: **Deeper Into the World

**Characters: **Komui, Kanda, Lenalee, Lavi, and Allen, mainly. Mentions of Finders, Miranda, Bookman, Rhode, etc.

**Rating: **T for Teen.

**Word Count: 2,795**

**Warnings: **Dark, dark, darkness. Weirdness, creepiness, character death, implied character death, violence, fire, and did I mention death…? And quite off-canon. Also my style is weird; I've heard it can get pretty confusing. POV changes.

**A/N: **It physically hurt to write this, no joke. First actual -fic. Comments and crit really, really extra-appreciated.

**Summary: **Everything goes very wrong, very fast.

Deeper Into the World

(the crow-black dream)

Human beings are not equal.

The structure of the Black Order is rigid in its form, upright and ecclesiastical like the century-old castle, doctrined by the unyielding words of God and His infallible Holiness. There is a hierarchy there, a stalwart echelon like the many dioceses, like the concentric circles of angels in Heaven's silver city. So it is with most organizations, sturdy and unrelenting, the bulwark of Christianity against the Devil's wrath, the skeleton of a gallows-tree in silhouette against the moon.

But the century-old castle is gone now, a dark tower left alone to crumble in the chaos of a new era, the latest scene in this obscene play. When Komui sleeps, he sleeps fitfully, thoughts of rebellion and anarchy flashing like burning trees behind his eyelids. The Finders are deserting. There have always been Finders deserting; the ones who never quite believed they were putting their lives on the line until they saw all those flat coffins, whole towns and villages of them, the sneers and averted eyes of everyone else. But where there once were weak dribbles of deserters, now there are whole pilgrimages, streams and eddies of them, the masks torn from their faces and defiance gleaming in their eyes. Komui can't keep track. He doesn't want to.

They are leaving; it is a fact. (Even more of them are dying. So it is with Finders, so it always has been. Fifty of them, one exorcist. A hundred of them, one exorcist. Komui used to be sickened by those odds.) They are leaving the Order, abandoning the cause, convinced their mission has become warped into some children's crusade (and how accurate they are in their perceptions, blunt as an executioner's axe and just as penetrating, just as ruthless). They look at Allen and the rest hatefully, whispering deathly words, snakes in his sister's bed, slipping poison in Kanda's soba.

And Komui is powerless to stop them.

And in his mind's eye he has nightmares of a gallows-tree, ever-burning, underneath a grinning red moon.


	2. the passage of time

(the passage of time)

Human beings are not equal.

Some of them are gifted with tremendous power.

Most of them did not ask for it.

Most of them accept it anyway.

They each have their own crosses to bear, their own cups, their own sack of shit to haul. It is God's will.

Some human beings are weak.

Kanda's parents, they were weak. Or, they must have been, to have been killed back when he was so young. He doesn't remember Japan, but it is a ghost-place, a country of souls, like demons hidden in the green fog over the fecund rice patties, of subtle murder in the red dusk. It is a fitting homeland for him, a crooked frame fitting a crooked picture, a curved sheathe for a curved sword.

Kanda is not weak.

No, Yu Kanda carries his strength in his shoulders, in his spine, the palms of his hands. His secrets are hidden elsewhere (beneath the taut rippling of his skin, underneath his eyelids), but his strength is always in plain sight—Mugen slung loosely from his hip, and Kanda is never not prepared to draw.

There is nothing ambiguous about strength and weakness. It is either kill or be killed, and Kanda has never been one to waste time on particulars. It is nothing to him who lives and who dies. Nothing to him at all.

The white-haired brat would have made him see things differently—prod him and push him into the swirling mist that is doubt. But doubt is merely an offshoot of fear, and Kanda…Kanda is already afraid.

(In the bottom of the hourglass, two flower petals shrivel and brown, curling into themselves like papers cast into the fire. He watches, and another one falls, like the remnant of a dream, like the prettiest harbinger of endgame Kanda has ever seen.)

And Kanda ignores the corpses, whether they are walking or sanctified, the corpses of expendable humans, as they march past him into ash and ruin.

And Kanda keeps telling himself that it is God's will, while another flower petal drifts and dances idly past his feet.


	3. the unanswered prayer

(the unanswered prayer)

Human beings are not equal.

Lenalee cries quietly to herself, her hands clasped in a prayer of blasphemy, her knees aching against the pew. She cries like she bleeds—softly, without stopping, without a single sound.

The exorcists are spread thin now, and Lenalee can feel them splitting at the seams. There is a tension there, a darkness where there wasn't one before, and she can't shake the feeling of a steel trap about spring, of serrated teeth and broken windows.

Allen and Lavi were supposed to be in Paris, but something had happened there, something had gone wrong—and then Allen was here, where he wasn't supposed to be, with her and Miranda in Berlin. Miranda had been so looking forward to going back to Germany, though at the same time she had been frightened out of her wits in typical Miranda fashion. Lenalee had tried to reassure her, a warm hand on her shoulder as the train screeched to a halt.

_It will be all right, Miranda._

_It will all be fine. _

Only it wasn't all right, it was all wrong, like the way the townspeople had turned against them, how stone and fire had fallen from the sky, and Allen had been there, a swirl of white like a vengeful angel among the villagers, and something—

_Miranda, look out._

A pointed fragment of stone, hurled from a living breathing trebuchet, hate flashing in her eyes—

_MIRANDA, LOOK OUT!_

She had fallen.

_Miranda? Oh, no, oh God, no_

Her legs had twisted beneath her, her mouth open like a dead flower. The curls of her hair turn into blood-soaked stone, chipped fragments of bone. Lenalee touches her cheek; her hands come away damp with darkness, with aqueous vitriol from Miranda's gone eye.

_No, NO, oh_—she had thrown up, she had been running and she had thrown up all over herself, like a newborn, like someone dying—_why, God, why? Why Miranda? Why _now_?_

_Where's Allen?_

He was still fighting, the cross on his sword stark against the flames as Berlin burned around them, his eyes gleaming with righteous fury. Or—?

_Run._

And she had run, until she had come to the church (abandoned, stripped of its statues and its sacraments), because the church was still sanctuary, even though Lenalee had to kick open the doors, breaking the lock with her boot heel.

And now she is weeping in the pew, her heads clasped together so tightly she can't feel them anymore, looking up into the sorrowful form of Jesus Christ dangling from his cross, and the pathos in his painted, peeling eyes gives her no comfort; he only reminds her of Miranda.

And Lenalee does not pray for the salvation of any sinner: the villagers, Miranda, Allen, herself. She does not pray for forgiveness.

Instead, she raises her eyes to the heavens and prays that the wrath of God be visited upon this place, that fire will consume them all.


	4. the fear of days to come

**((A/N: **Lavi gets the longer chapter [because I love him]. Character bias, what character bias?))

* * *

(the fear of days to come)

"Human beings are not equal."

Bookman surveys his apprentice critically, through wizened, narrowed eyes. His voice and manner are grave, solemn words gathering like spittle in the wrinkled corners of his mouth. He trails his ancient fingertips over the delicate film of yellowed newspapers strewn across the tabletop, stroking the way an undertaker would inspect a fresh cadaver.

"History has taught us this, time and time again."

Lavi watches, Lavi listens. Normally he'd be inattentive, listless, daydreaming of young maidens, coy and curvy (sometimes young boys, wanton and lithe), of night adventures beneath the bridges in the city or the cool country meadows. His movements would be constantly distracted by thoughts of mapping the numerous contours of warm young bodies in the dark.

Today, though, his cartographer hands are still. Things are changing.

Bookman reads the newspapers, the movements of the wind, the faces of the people, reads between them all. And Lavi reads Bookman, and he realizes things are changing.

They have happened before.

History is doomed to repeat itself.

"History is doomed to repeat itself."

Bookman folds his wide sleeves into themselves, his long black cigarette trailing smoke into the air like ink into clear water. "Explain why, Lavi."

Lavi is quick to answer. His voice is concise; his eye is clear and intelligent.

"History is the accumulation of past mistakes. To err is to be human. No human being is perfect."

_Except for her. _

_The city girl with red-gold hair, hands that belonged to the Madonna herself, the girl with all the kisses and all the answers hidden like secret words in the depths of her beautiful eyes._

_But she's gone. _

"History is the record of the human race. The same cycles repeat themselves because we have yet to evolve a higher level of consciousness. Humans are simple beings. We repeat our mistakes because we do not know any better. Until the human race undergoes a radical—"

"Stop," Bookman utters. "Too wordy, you idiot. You've already made your point, so shut up."

Lavi shuts up. His hands are still. Bookman examines his face with the same haughtily slit eyes, kneeling like some grand Asian despot, the idol of a long forgotten god.

"But correct."

Lavi doesn't smile. He doesn't burst into happy-crazed theatrics over Bookman's small approval, proud and cocky as a strutting songbird with its chest puffed out. Such gestures are meaningless to him now.

Things are changing. He has changed, he knows he has changed, and what's more he knows he has changed for the worse.

You weren't supposed to care, as a Bookman. You weren't supposed to get involved, as a Bookman. But he'd been so happy back then, (it seemed so long ago), it eked out of every pore, his love for life and all its wonders, all its mysteries, and it wasn't long before all his ebullience and moonlight found an outlet.

Her.

La femme, la fleur, the Parisian flower girl he used to call 'en rose', because she called him 'La vie'. And he'd been everything with her, because that's what love was like.

He had lost her. There had been riots in the streets, burning, panic, Rhode at work again, making nightmares come true. People were saying that the gargoyles of Notre Dame were coming to life. They were springing up from their high stone aeries and swooping down into the crowds, snapping off people's limbs and heads. People were saying 'beware the little witch girl on her broomstick, on her umbrella, the laughing girl with the bloodstained hands'.

And Lavi had left his En Rose, tear-streaked and afraid in the doorway of the flower shop, the flower shop with the century-old slate roof held up by crumbling mortar, the flower shop that lay directly in the path of the flames.

But Lavi hadn't lost her to the fire, to the chaos and ruin that was Rhode on a killing spree. No, Lavi had lost her to the Devil. The Devil with his top hat and mirrored spectacles, the Devil who never stopped smiling, and she had never stood a chance.

He hadn't gone to her mother's funeral, the old woman with kind eyes and soft hands and a smile for the nice boy that treated her daughter so well. He should have. The Devil walks at cemeteries.

Lavi doesn't remember the grotesque new form the Earl had so lovingly crafted for her. Just her soul, bandaged like some wounded thing, writhing in the flames.

And he remembers how he screamed.

Allen was with him. Allen beside him, with his cursed eye bright as a beacon, an augury of imminent death, heedless of Lavi's pain, raising his black-and-white sword.

And Lavi remembers thinking, _I can't. It should be me, but I can't. _

And _it's my fault._

_It's all my fault._

* * *

And Allen saying, _I'm sorry, _in a voice that Lavi didn't know. In a voice that did not belong to Allen Walker, with his gentle smile and sad eyes, but to someone else. Something else, holding the sword easily in its left hand, something with eyes that were pitiless…and angry.

_I'm sorry but it had to be done. _

* * *

So Lavi stays with the words of today and yesterday, inside with the relic that is Bookman and the wisdom of ages past. Because he is afraid of the world outside, the little laughing witch-girl, the fire and the memories of her voice.

Because he is afraid of tomorrow, and all the horrors it will bring.

And all the horrors it has already brought.


	5. the white knight, falling

(the white knight, falling)

Human beings are not equal.

Allen has known this for years of bitter tears, his left arm twisted like a broken doll, back when his hair was matted and mouse brown. If the world was fair, parents wouldn't leave their children alone. If all human beings were equal, boys wouldn't cry on Christmas and good dogs wouldn't have to die.

Even after Cross had found him, and he had found God, his eyes shining with hope and devotion, back when it all really mattered. Back when he thought he had his future all figured out, back when he thought God would provide. He still knew, even then, that human beings weren't equal. It was an ideal that was only achieved in the Kingdom of Heaven.

How naïve he was back then, how stupid. How badly he wishes he could go back.

But there is no going back, not for him, the crusader of the Black Order, the laughing white knight. There are scenes yet in Millennium's play, and Allen must play his part. The shroud of ashes and shadow plays about his reflection in mirrors, a trick of darkness, the handprint of a ghost; in his dreams it whispers to him in the voice of his past, tells him everything he wants to hear.

Sometimes Allen thinks he can't hear his heartbeat anymore.

In Berlin, when he sees Miranda fall, Lenalee's red tears, the dancing flames, and he does not feel. In Paris, when he slays an akuma, when Lavi stops speaking to him, when Rhode beckons to him, when she says _It's good to see you again after so long_, _my brother. _Kanda doesn't look him in the eye anymore; Komui looks at him sometimes like he's never seen him before. Like he has become someone else.

None of that matters anymore. There are always outbreaks, there are always losses, there are always Finders betraying them, there are always people afraid of them, there are always akuma with their pitiful souls who need his graves of light, there are always the eyes of God and the Devil watching him.

And Allen fights, teeth gritted and his sword held aloft. He battles with the agents of the Earl, he stains his white cloak with blood, he takes no prisoners and has no mercy. Allen fights with everything he has.

Even though he has nothing left to fight for.


	6. the beginning of the end

(the beginning of the end)

Human beings are not equal.

They never have been. Not since the first moment of creation.

But the Earl will change all of that, soon enough.

Because then, there won't be any human beings left at all.


	7. deeper into the world

(deeper into the world)

The Order falls first. It happened shortly after the destruction of the Ark—a whole squadron of exorcists lost to the ether that is the mystery of that place, whatever force kept it in limbo that they could never understand.

Only Lenalee understands what that means, that what happened to the Ark was not a cause but an effect—even then she leaves her brother's arms, the security of her once-beloved home. Because only Lenalee understands that now no one is safe anymore.

She is alone. They cremated Miranda months ago, along with Arystar. Kanda stayed behind to fight, despite the blue-black spirals along his arms, down the length of his chest. Lavi and Bookman had left the Order behind them days before, without a single word of warning, without a single word goodbye.

She expects to find him crucified, hanging from the façade of some building, his eye and left arm gone, the handiwork of Tyki Mikk, level 4s circling overhead.

But he finds her first, instead.

He is resplendent, Allen Walker, in all his glory, his white sword shining, the black crown perched upon his head.

_No…_

And he laughs again, or screams, bleeding and crying from the empty spaces in his head, from the black-and-white worlds where his eyes used to be.

* * *

**A/N: **Yes, I doomed the Black Order. D

Title comes from Chapter coughcoughcoughtoolazytolookitup in the Vampire of the Castle Arc when Allen's eye fixes itself or something and that giant freaky-deaky skull thing comes OUT OF HIS EYE SOCKET and starts _talking_ and yeah. That was cool.


End file.
